Devs: please, faster multiplayer games; heres my requested feature list

I think this is actually a good idea. Would save you a lot of time getting up to speed when starting a new game. Though I'm only in for it as long as I would also be able to disable this feature, like with the resource income speed and Quick Start features etcetera.

There are reasons we play we just normal fleet sizes in standard MP settings. If we wanted larger fleet sizes than we just turn up the settings.

1. Lag (this reason is self explainatory)

2. If it was just punching out through defenses than you would just guarentee the person with the best economy the winner since he would just outnumber you and be able to take as many loses as possible and we might as well leave the "tactical" part of the genre out.

Speeding up the game even more would probably break it since we will probably be a bit overwelmed at the pace at which is going thus micro would be much harder than it needs to be and thus we might ostracize newer players that are trying to get into the MP scene especially if they play on anything less than the fastest mode. I've seen players who almost refused to play at the fastest speed bc they just can't keep up with it. Making that standard would be dumb. The fastest mode to me is at the perfect speed.

Also while ULTRA quick start might be okay. I like to actually expand my empire from just this 1 planet. I feel a certain immersion factor might be ruined if we added this in.

A permement tech level is just plain stupid. Half the fun is growing and researching up to the highest degree. Putting a limit on that would just take that away. There are also balance issues there when you could completely block off necessary upgrades and units for the faction to put up a fight. Unless you rearranged per setting which would just be a waste of development time and money in my opinion. Say I put a tier 2 tech limit right now on Trinity. I would just make TEC overpowered since Advent and Vasari are just cut off from all the good stuff in their trees. While TEC gets them LRMs and Flak.

Also the MP speed is really just fine. Most games only last about 1-2 hours maybe a little more. It really isn't that bad when you compare it to like 10 hours AI comp stomps or w/e.

I take this as personal insult and so my reply is, no, YOURE stupid. All of these features are entirely optional anyways.

All of these features take away from certain elements of the game, and therefore make the game lose some strategic and "gameplay immersion" elements, however, the trade off is that it requires the player to think differently and therefore replace the lost strategic elements with new ones in addition to simply making the game faster.

Essentially what youre doing is complaining against speed chess because it limits the amount of choices the player can make.

I pretty much agree with Rovert.  The game is fine as it is now with Quickstart.  There is still strategy and decisions to be made even early on in the game, right from the get-go.

Cmon now... are you sure you read everything? I never said anything to the contrary.

Unless players start close to eachother, only play on small maps, or if the players can literally see the future, a game's outcome is not so obvious. Most players dont want to wait and see how long they can hold out against a "winning" opponent because of how long it would take and they feel it not worth it. This speeds up the game further so that players are encouraged to actually finish their games instead of assuming defeat.

The problem of assume defeat and just "GGing" is not due to actual game speed is more or less the actual size of the population. We have only about 100 players on average which is better than before thanks to steam. But we have people who wait a long long time just to get a game start lasting up to an hour or more. We try to get as many games in as possible without making it overwelming and actually keeping the the actual strategic and tactical part of the game.

And really if you know you are going to lose than you might as well surrender.

If we wanted to rush every game in about an hour or so than I would be playing something like C&C or SC2. The point of a 4xRTS game is build and manage your empire not nessecarilly go out to kill your emenies as quickly as possible.

Also this is the average of about 2 hours per game in a 5v5 single random huge map scenario which is our standard mode. The only times it gets longer is multistar where you can place 4 SBs to block off the entire system unless you are TEC and can spam 100 Orgovs.

dp

No, its because of the length of the games. Furthermore, shorter games=larger community=smaller lobby wait times.

Actually some players WOULD like to be able to finish their games, rather than quit early because they think they are losing and dont want to have to wait an hour just to make sure, which they could very well be not possibly if they played their cards right.

No, it would be like sins (because it is sins), except faster.

Yes, there are already some new victory conditions announced, but I want more additions to game options:

Larger fleet sizes: The idea is that it makes it easier to punch through planet defenses therefore eliminating a huge amount of time that would have been spent trying to get around them or fighting them.

Um, no.  Fleets are large enough.  If anything, change the cost of units per upkeep, by use of a mod.

Able to set tech level: It would make for faster games if the player could set a permanent tech level not dependant on tech buildings and such.

I think I get what you are saying here, but I don't see it working well.  The techs of the factions are so diverse, it isn't possible to just set an arbitrary level that is max/min.  And that is what is so great about Sins... the diverse races and techs.

Ultra quick start: You and your opponents empire has already made a lot of progress.

Extra fast building, unit speed, and resource collection options, and also an option that increases the damage that units do up to a maximum of 3 times so its not game breaking.

Well thats it.

Hmm, also not really possible.

And the supper fast speeds no as well, just due to the need for micromanagement.  This isn't Starcraft (thank god) and I don't support it going to that.

It is an empire builder in space.  And I think it is very close to the right balance on that.

I think the only things needed are Multiplayer enhancements - map sharing, mod sharing, matchmaking, ect....

Surrendering is a ingame mechanic thus quiting out when you think you are going to lose is part of the game and thus should be considered finished. A finished game is when the victory screen shows for the victors. If the emeny surrenders/quits than thats their choice.

Also we are usually pretty good at determining when a game is just over. I mean it's usually the situation where we take out like 2 guys leaving it to be like a 5v3 or less. By then it's impossible to actually win by then since your eco and military forces at least outnumber them to a large degree.

Essentially what youre doing is complaining against speed chess because it limits the amount of choices the player can make.

That arguement is a bit uncanny since speed chess does limit the amount of choices a player can make. It only limits their thinking time and strategy time which already happens with game speed. You still have a balanced game since everybody gets the same equal strength pieces. The rest comes down to player skill which is what you want in a good PvP community.

 SOASE units are unique for each one and thus balance is much more challenging. The tech tree is suppose to help you overcome those "inbalances". Sure there is tactics but useless if the emeny just completely outguns you with a much better eco and so. Thus limiting the tech tree isn't worth the effort since you would have to rebalance so much.

sins game speed at fastest settings is perfect as it is.  Even faster settings would be ridiculous and start to throw game balance off just like it did when fastest originally was introduced.

Super large fleets in MP = Super lag games = no fun.

Um, no. Theres no reason for it to not be an official feature, especially since its completely optional.

Youll have to do a better job of explaining this.

Youll have to do better than that.

Im not sure what you said here either. I guess your saying... its hard to micromanage when things are going fast?

Really? I could have sworn it was /sarcasm

To you. To me, and actually 95% of the gaming world it isnt fast enough. Thats not to say I dont enjoy the length of the games, but its nice to be able to kick the speed of the game into overdrive when you just want to play a quick skirmish.

Its optional. If your computer cant handle such speeds, dont enable them then. That simple.

No. This is false.

There are no options in this game except to speed stuff up a bit, which flavor of destruction, and if you want pirates with that.  There is no way to:

** Get players to say connected in MP or behave decently
** Start players with 2x, 3x, 5x, 10x credit, metal, crystal
** Start players with Tier 0, 1, 2 or any tier of research in particular areas completed (No Deathmatch Mode)
** Prevent players from research tier 7 or just setting a max tech level (max level research -the cannons)
** Prevent certain ships from being played
** Disable abilities for a pure gun match
** Research in a decision tree format where you take a research path and another is disabled
** Have a real campaign with unit carry over unless you really fake it and rely on others' imaginations to do the rest

Accept that for $40 or whatever, you get a cool titan and an odd little ship to fly along side it at -hopefully- a good frame rate.

Right now of what I have played of at the FASTER settings it almost perfect speed for the game online. Any more and you ruin the fundamentals of what makes SINS unique. Sorry, but really not much needs done to the game except balancing a few things and boosting the online player count via rebellion having good online match maker and manger.

Personally I would like for the AI to stop building so damn many frigates and start building more Capships to have large scale Capitalship battles.  Its all those frigates that cause the lag.